1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a frame for an optical disk unit mounted in PC instruments such as personal computer or mobile computer, portable terminal devices, and imaging devices, and relates to the optical disk unit.
2. Field of the Invention
An optical disk unit, which performs reproduction of data from a CD-based optical disk such as CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW, a DVD-based optical disk such as DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM, an optical disk appropriate for blue laser, and other optical disks (hereinafter, abbreviated as optical disk) and/or performs recording of data into the optical disk, is known. Such an optical disk unit is mounted in a computer unit such as personal computer, and for a small-size PC such as laptop PC, an optical disk drive is also tried to be reduced in size and thickness.
Such an optical disk unit has a disk tray which is movable between a loading position and an ejection position of an optical disk with respect to a box-like support frame, and reads data recorded on the optical disk using an optical head placed on the disk tray and a driving mechanism for the head with the disk tray being received in the support frame, and then reproduces the data.
The box-like support frame is configured by fixing a chassis-like upper cover formed into an approximately rectangular shape using sheet metal 0.4 mm to 0.5 mm in thickness to a chassis-like bottom cover formed into an approximately rectangular shape using sheet metal 0.4 mm to 0.5 mm in thickness.
A conventional configuration of the optical disk drive unit for the laptop PC is described in, for example, “JP-A-2001-307460” or “JP-A-2003-151199”.
Currently, further reduction in thickness is desired for the laptop PCs, accordingly further reduction in thickness is also demanded for the optical disk unit, however, since the conventional optical disk unit has a configuration where the disk tray is covered by the bottom cover from a bottom and covered by the upper cover from a top, the unit has a critical thickness of 7.5 mm, which has been a problem for achieving the further reduction in thickness.
Moreover, since the optical disk unit is mounted within a chassis of the laptop PC, the bottom cover or the upper cover are not necessary in some internal configurations of the laptop PC, and there has been a problem of disturbing reduction in thickness of the laptop PC itself.
Furthermore, weight saving is required also in electronic instruments, as a result weight saving is also required in an optical disk unit mounted in the electronic instruments.